Celtic influence

[sidonian]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Very interesting thread:

Although I'm more of an historian than a linguist I *do* think
it plausible that English was much influenced by the Celtic
of pre Saxon Britain.  It can certainly explain
some of the features in English that are non-typical
of Germanic languages.

iffr762 at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu wrote:

>         Accent, which in popular usage is generally taken to refer only to
> sound features, is not the same as dialect, a point you repeatedly fail to
> appreciate.  Thus Southern Senators like Ernest Hollings and Strom
> Thurmond have a southern accent, and in acordance with custom speak in a
> regional dialect (as British lords used to), but they do not speak a lower
> class dialect.  The lower class dialect of the regions they are from is
> appreciably different.

Good point.

I do agree with you that in almost every language there
are formal and vulgar modes.  The upper classes invariably have
better acquaintance with, and more occasion to use, formal
language while the lower classes sometimes always speak in
a "slang" version of the language.  Even in "classless" America
we have this.  Whether someone is from New York or Atlanta
he or she will often switch back and forth between formal and
vulgar depending on social context.  (q.v. I speak to clients one way
but quite another way to buddies)

but

I would expect that if one people conquer another people and the
conquered are pressured into using the conqueror's language that
there would be a much larger influence on the sound features of
the conqueror's language than on the lexicon or grammar.  One of
the most difficult tasks for someone when learning a foreign language
is learning how to properly make unfamiliar sounds.  Even after
learning to speak a foreign language fluently, many speakers are
still unable to pronounce all of its sounds properly.

It is reasonable to assume that when the Anglo-Saxons
conquered Britain that they intermarried quite a bit with some of
the indigenous inhabitants?  (I know it's dreadful to suggest
this about the ancestors of the English, but the kill all
of the men and make concubines of the women method of
conquest was pretty standard up until this century.)

It's plausible to suggest that much of the population of
the early Anglo-Saxon regions in Britain were celtic in background
(far more plausible than the idea that every single celt was either
killed or tossed into the fringe.  Wouldn't the accent and
idiosyncratic use of the conqueror's tongue by those whose
mothers or nurses spoke with thick accents have greatly
influenced the speech patterns of subsequent generations?

>         So your theory then enables us to confidently (or should I say
> immodestly) predict that Southern aristocrats speak Black English.  As
> someone once recently said:

>                 1) Nice try but it won't work
>                 2) QED

>         The travellers in question must not have been from that region,
> and must have been mistaking the shared similaritiies of Southern American
> English and Black English (which is of course a Southern dialect) as
> identity.

I don't think this is at all an unreasonable theory.  As someone who
_is_  from the American south I am intimately acquainted with the
dialects here and, with eyes closed or over the telephone it is
often impossible to tell the difference between a "black" dialect and
a "thick" southern accent.

Furthermore, in "The Story of English," the authors point out that the
similarities between southern American dialect and black dialect stem from the
fact that even the most wealthy had black nannies and lived very closely with
their black house servants.  They also point out how this similarity is even
more marked among the women who, at that time, spent most of their time at home
while many of the men were sent away to schools where they learned to speak in
a more formal dialect.

This same book also states that prior to the 17th century that many
English dialects shared many common sound features with the
Irish dialect of English today.  Although they suggest that this is
because the older pronunciations were better preserved in
Ireland and America it could just as easily be proposed that
these features stemmed from a celtic substrate that was partially
purged (in England) through public education.